enlightened Christian people of the United
Kingdom are not the English government. There has been, for two
hundred years, a power behind the Throne, behind Parliament, behind
the people, essentially selfish and commercial. This has controlled
India for profit, while the benevolent people were anxious to
christianize and uplift. It has befriended the Turk while England wept
over the Turkish barbarities. It forced opium upon China while the
Christian people sent missionaries. The people of England love
freedom, yet the government has endeavored to crush it in the American
colonies and everywhere throughout the world, when in conflict with a
selfish commercial policy. The English people cry out against human
slavery, yet in the struggle in the United States, when slavery was in
the balance, the English government earnestly espoused the cause of
those who upheld slavery. The English people rejoiced that the slave
trade in Africa was abolished, yet the government enacted the hut tax,
and compels now the service of the young and vigorous blacks in the
mines, sending them back to their people when their strength declines.

In the establishment of the republic of the United States there was a
strong resistance to any debt or subordination to usurers. The history
of banks in the United States shows a struggle at the birth of the
nation between the usurers, who demanded the management of the
finances, and the people who resisted. This struggle continued for
half a century, when the people triumphed, and for thirty years there
was no hint of a purpose to overthrow what was regarded as the settled
policy of the nation.

The first bank was incorporated in 1791. Its establishment was
strongly resisted, but being urged by the Secretary of the Treasury, a
charter was granted for twenty years. When that charter expired by
limitation in 1811, there was a struggle by the usurers to secure its
renewal, but they were defeated. They did not, however, abandon their
effort. In 1816 they secured the charter of the second bank of the
United States. This charter was also limited to twenty years,
expiring in 1836. There was a tremendous struggle for its renewal, but
the chief executive, backed by a strong political party, so completely
defeated it that the usurers for the time yielded, and for thirty
years the settled policy of the government forbade the alliance with
usurers and the making of any public debt. Many of the leading
statesmen of t